Season’s greetings with our best wishes for the New Year

2022 was marked by the devastating invasion of Ukraine by Russian troops. Millions of Ukrainians had to flee their country, among them many art scholars and artists. We immediately joined the #ScienceForUkraine initiative and welcomed five Ukrainian and two Russian art scholars threatened by the war. The conflict reignited the sadly familiar concern for art and artefacts in times of crisis and lends a particular currency to the work of Francesca Borgo’s research group Decay, Loss and Conservation in Art History, recently established at the Bibliotheca Hertziana.
We cover many of these issues online in different formats. The latest episode of our video series Hertziana Insights "Palimpsest Naples" explores the effects of natural disasters on Naples' collective identity, art, architecture and urban tissue. Complementing this, the online exhibition Paper Eruptions showcases rare books on Vesuvius from our library holdings. Centered on Rome‘s art scene of the 1960s and 1970s, the online exhibition on Massimo Piersanti and his photographs for the Incontri internazionali d'Arte, expertly catalogued and digitized by our Photographic Collection, provides an impressive documentation the political and social ferment of those decades.

We look forward to sharing more scientific formats, new publications and innovative research in the coming year – stay in touch on Facebook, Twitter, Vimeo and through our Newsletter!